Jun 21, 2010

Daybreakers Movie Review, No Glittery Vampires Need Apply

I had actually posted this review a while ago on my book blog before I started my movie blog, but I just watched this movie again last night and I thought I would post this on my official movie blog :)
Daybreakers
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill

Premise: In the year 2019, a plague has transformed most every human into vampires. Faced with a dwindling blood supply, the fractured dominant race plots their survival; meanwhile, a researcher works with a covert band of vamps on a way to save humankind.

My Thoughts: Now this a vampire movie! It holds true to most of the standard vampire myths pre-twilight. Vampires burn in the sun so their society sticks to the night, and since most of the world has been taken over by vampires and very few humans exist the roles of night and day have been reversed completely. Instead of regular sidewalks they have "subwalks" an underground tunnel system to access during the day.
This movie to me is what would happen if there really were vampires, I think it would spread and spread until humans were all but extinct and the decisions they make in the movie is pretty close to how I think people would act in a situation such as this so I found the plot very believable, well as believable as a vampire movie can get.
The fashion is this movie is awesome. All the vampires dress in a sort of 40's inspired look and the hair and clothing is all very elegant and classy. I find a lot of movies that take place in the near future adopt this look as the 40s inspired such clean lines and suits generally never go out of style so it doesn't date the movie.
Now onto the eyes. The eyes are amber coloured on all the vampires and it was exceptionally well done. It's what the eyes should have looked like in Twilight. There is this one scene where all these vampires are waiting for the subway train and the tunnel goes dark as a train passes and all you see are the eyes, very spooky.

Now this movie is rated 18A in Canada, and I'm pretty sure it's rated R in the US, so this is definitely not a kids movie, it's quite violent and I would recommend this to adults only.

Overall I thought it was really well done. I give this a 8 out of 10.

Side Note: The main character's name is in fact Edward, and I've been getting a little annoyed at people who say "oh they copied Twilight" etc. I just wanted to state this couldn't be true. The screenplay for the movie Daybreakers was written in 2004 well before Twilight was released, also the movie was actually filmed and completed in 2007 before the Twilight phenomenon reached its peak. I'm not sure why it took so long before Daybreakers was released in theatres, it may have had to do with the budget or distributors or something I know nothing about, but the writers did not copy anything from Twilight and any similarities are therefore coincidental.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds goood. I can't wait to see it. I <3 40s fashion :)

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  2. This movie mostly just pissed me off. None of the vampire cliches are ever explained, so you never know what to expect. For example, the movie opens with bats. Are these lame vampires that turn into bats? That's the kinda thing that audiences need to know!

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